2.2. Installation Media

This section will help you determine which different media types you can use to
install Debian. For example, if you have a floppy disk drive on your machine,
it can be used to install Debian. There is a whole chapter devoted to media,
Chapter 4, Obtaining System Installation Media, which lists the advantages and
disadvantages of each media type. You may want to refer back to this page once
you reach that section.

2.2.1. CD-ROM/DVD-ROM

Note

Whenever you see “CD-ROM” in this manual, it applies to both
CD-ROMs and DVD-ROMs, because both technologies are really
the same from the operating system's point of view, except for some very
old nonstandard CD-ROM drives which are neither SCSI nor IDE/ATAPI.

CD-ROM based installation is supported for some architectures.
On machines which support bootable CD-ROMs, you should be able to do a
completely
floppy-less
installation. Even if your system doesn't
support booting from a CD-ROM, you can use the CD-ROM in conjunction
with the other techniques to install your system, once you've booted
up by other means; see Chapter 5, Booting the Installation System.

On DECstations, booting from CD-ROM requires a SCSI CD-ROM drive
capable of working with a logical blocksize of 512 bytes. Many of the
SCSI CD-ROM drives sold on the PC market do not have this capability.
If your CD-ROM drive has a jumper labeled “Unix/PC” or
“512/2048”, place it in the “Unix” or
“512” position.

CD 1 contains the installer for the r3k-kn02 subarchitecture
(the R3000-based DECstations 5000/1xx and 5000/240 as well as
the R3000-based Personal DECstation models), CD 2 the
installer for the r4k-kn04 subarchitecture (the R4x00-based
DECstations 5000/150 and 5000/260 as well as the Personal DECstation
5000/50).

To boot from CD, issue the command boot
#/rzid
on the firmware prompt, where # is the
number of the TurboChannel device from which to boot (3 on most
DECstations) and id is the SCSI ID of the
CD-ROM drive. If you need to pass additional parameters, they can
optionally be appended with the following syntax:

boot
#/rzid
param1=value1 param2=value2 ...

2.2.2. Hard Disk

Booting the installation system directly from a hard disk is another option
for many architectures. This will require some other operating system
to load the installer onto the hard disk.

2.2.3. Network

The network can be used during the installation to retrieve files needed
for the installation. Whether the network is used or not depends on the
installation method you choose and your answers to certain questions that
will be asked during the installation. The installation system supports
most types of network connections (including PPPoE, but not ISDN or PPP),
via either HTTP or FTP. After the installation is completed, you can also
configure your system to use ISDN and PPP.

You can also boot the installation system over the
network.

Diskless installation, using network booting from a local area network
and NFS-mounting of all local filesystems, is another option.

2.2.4. Un*x or GNU system

If you are running another Unix-like system, you could use it to install
Debian GNU/Linux without using the debian-installer described in the rest of this
manual. This kind of install may be useful for users with otherwise
unsupported hardware or on hosts which can't afford downtime. If you
are interested in this technique, skip to the Section D.3, “Installing Debian GNU/Linux from a Unix/Linux System”.

2.2.5. Supported Storage Systems

The Debian boot disks contain a kernel which is built to maximize the
number of systems it runs on. Unfortunately, this makes for a larger
kernel, which includes many drivers that won't be used for your
machine (see Section 8.6, “Compiling a New Kernel” to learn how to
build your own kernel). Support for the widest possible range of
devices is desirable in general, to ensure that Debian can be
installed on the widest array of hardware.